When Bangladesh is an example for India

Manasi Gopalakrishnan

The increasing discrimination between men and women in different countries can be understood from the ‘World Gender Inequality Index’ of the World Economic Forum. It’s shame full for them to see the index who thinks that India is progressing in all sectors.

This is the report of a Manasi Gopalakrishnan journalist of the South-East Asia region in Deutsche Welle. According to Mansi, the culture of other countries of south Asian countries is similar to India. In all these countries, women are imposed varieties of obligations. Women have to give quite a bit of labor in household works. They learn this culture from their paternal house and have to follow in their husband’s house. In India, women are always compared with Sita or Shoti. In India ‘Ideal Indian Woman’ means she will remain in the house, will always think about the respect of the family and will follow the society and culture.

But women of this country are a little bit lucky, because they have some women leaders here. For that participation of women in politics has increased in many areas of the country. For this, they got a reflection in the ‘Gender Inequality index’ of the World Economic Forum (WEF). In gender equality, the position of women of India is 15. But the picture is relatively good for Bangladesh. Bangladesh is in the top among the countries of Asia. They are in 10th position. It happened because two women leaders, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia are leading the country for the past few decades.

Where Bangladesh is in 68 in the index India is 114. Only in Pakistan is behind India in the list among the Asian countries. Pakistan’s position on women’s rights is severing in position. Their position is 142. The WEF said in a report that, the main reason of this discrimination in India is the birth ratio of boys and girls. It means every time when one thousand boys born only 914 girls born that time. The statistics of 2011 says so.

Mansi said women give double effort, so the economic wheel is in motion. But there in India there is no importance of their health and education. We see from the developing countries that they are giving importance to the health and education of women and so the picture of the society is now changing.

The Idea of Bangladeshi Nobel-winning professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus came from here. For this, he founded the Grameen Bank. The women of this bank made themselves self-sufficient by doing small business with small capital. This kind of efforts helps women to make women self-reliant and self sufficient.

Manasi Gopalakrishnan gave another example of Bangladesh. He showed how Bangladeshi women are working to help each other to improve their health; they are ever-vigilant to give any service to the rural women through ‘Tathaykalyani’.

Their transport is a bicycle and has the information-technology and medical equipments. They mainly give the IT related services and help the pregnant women in the village with some common medical support. This kind of project is also in India, which name is ‘ASHA’. Their job is to teach the rural people how to take care of the pregnant woman and advice on nutrition.

Mansi thinks; this kind of initiative helps women to be self-reliant. However, to make a success of these initiatives the society need to change the attitude towards women. The interesting thing is, in several areas of South Asia women is the head of the family. In the eastern part of India Khashia tribes have women led family. They have no gender discrimination in family or the society. Unfortunately, India’s so-called modern society doesn’t have such a system.

So, according to Mansi, this gender discrimination index is a signal for India. Where India is voicing about economic growth there, the index is showing that women are half of the population, and it is impossible to prosper without the development of women.